- Howdy.

- And howdy.

- And thank you, Greg.

I'll say just a couple of words about collaboration.

I am the director of the Center for Health Systems and Design, which lives half in the College of Architecture and half in the College of Medicine, which should give you a hint that we are believers in collaborative effort.

We have a focus in the center on design for health.

And so, we're interested not just in the health care side of the equation, but we're also interested in what we can do with design that protects health and design that actually can improve our health.

And if you think about that for just a moment, that's a broad mission.

Why do we care?

Quite simply, because you cannot tell me about a project, a building, an outdoor space, that does not impact the health of the people in it.

Now, think about that for just a moment.

As a design professional, the inescapable responsibility for impacting the health of the people in your projects.

And the simple question to all of us is, are we ready for that?

We can't dodge it.

We have that responsibility.

Our buildings do that.

Our outdoor spaces do that to the people who are in them.

And so ethically, professionally, morally, are we ready?

Are we equipped?

Are we trained?

Are we mindful of that responsibility?

And are we prepared to have careers that are accountable?

To that end and to equip our students, we have built formal relationships to every other college in A and M. And so, we are prepared right now for a student that has an interest in the accountability of designing for health in any dimension.

We're prepared to put in your committee, people from other disciplines that can help you understand the breadth and depth of designing for health.

It is a great privilege to be entrusted with design responsibility.

It is also a tremendous responsibility to believe and understand our designs impact people's health.

Let's be sure that we're equipped and trained to do that in a positive way.

Greg?

- Great.

Thank you, Ray.

So my name Dr. Greg Luhan.

I'm an architect, a practitioner, and the Department Head for the Department of Architecture.

So, those of you who know me know me and my family.

My father was a rocket scientist and launched rockets into space.

My mother was a fashion designer.

My older brother is a GIS specialist and my younger brother is in the FBI and he's a computational specialist and analyst.

So for me to occupy, in a very critical space, in my own life and upbringing has always focused on the kitchen table being the center of a collaborative environment.

We are constantly receiving external discussions about everything across the world, across every spectrum and across all scales.

And that's exactly what I bring to my own practice as an architect is thinking across scales, across disciplines, and enabling opportunities for my students to think actively and engage in how we can positively impact the world around us and also beyond us, whether or not that's space or below ground or at sea.

I often bring that collaborative environment into my design studios, where our students work from the large urban scale to the building scale, to the details and into the interior environments.

That type of collaboration has enabled us to do projects like the Solar Decathlon, where we had 16 different colleges and centers across the university to collaborate together, to design the highest performance building possible and bring it to compete against international teams.

It's brought us to re-imagine the houseboat industry in Eastern Kentucky.

It's brought us to new realms to design communities that have been destroyed by tornadoes or earthquakes or other natural disasters.

My collaborative environment has always been driven by resiliency and not only resiliency of design and structures, but also to the resiliency of the people.

Design is, in fact, a social act.

And as Dr. Pentecost mentioned, it also improves health.

So, what can we do as architects, as thinkers, as educators, to position our students in a very dynamic way that captures our imagination?

Because I firmly believe that we are as unbounded as our imagination and the realms of possibility are at our fingertips.

So, any type of context that can put us in a place that imagines new possibilities and to challenge conventional norms will undoubtedly change our world.

So, I do believe though that there is a distinction between collaboration, cooperation, and coordination.

And many of the disciplines often coordinate with each other.

And it's about getting people in the right place at the right time, where they cooperate by telling the right stories to the people at the right time, literally picking up the phone and making the right relationships.

But if we truly want to collaborate, we have to have belief in our own ability and our, have confidence in our ability to think differently and to work together.

And I spent several years studying that in academia, 22 years, to be exact, and three years writing a dissertation focused specifically on a person's belief in their own capabilities to solve problems.

And that is called design self-efficacy.

And I really look forward to taking this, not only through the lens of a design studio or a course, but now across the Department of Architecture.

So I thank you very much and I'll turn it over to Patrick Suermann.

- Thanks so much, Greg.

I'm sorry to be coming to you from my house, but Greg really hit the nail on the head.

This is a team sport.

In order to improve the built environment, we need all the people who are on this call and then some.

I mean, we just heard Professor Hernan Guerra Santos who's in charge of our nationally leading industry relations office.

The Construction Industry Advisory Council has over 200 members and all of those firms rely heavily on engineers and architects to make up the AEC profession.

And so, it's the collaboration that we require that makes sure that our projects are successful.

And so, while the construction managers are going to make sure that the project brings together the team and assembles all the subcontractors who are going to primarily execute the work that people see, all of that comes from the minds and the brains of all the people that we're seeing on this call here.

And so I'm just incredibly grateful for great architects.

I'm incredibly appreciative of communicative engineers, and it's a requirement that our students also be similarly good communicators with the challenges that they face.

So, I really, I love construction.

I'm a civil engineer undergrad, but I chose, my two degrees are in construction because I love bringing together teams who are successful financially and physically to make sure that we're always helping improve the built environment.

So, I didn't prepare any words today, but I think just hearing from Professors Guerra earlier really brings it home.

I mean, he worked on multi-billion dollar hospital projects to help our wounded and has actually helped some of my family members at the San Antonio Military Medical Center, that project that Hernan worked on.

So, on the day before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, all the people on here are making critical care and acute care facilities that could help in the unfortunate possibility that, in addition to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, that we get attacked on our American soil.

So, appreciate everybody being on this call and the teamwork and comradery that George Mann helps implement through this series is really, really much appreciated.

So, thank you, George.

And I'll hand it over to Galen Newman.

- Thank you, Patrick.

- Yeah.

Thanks, Patrick.

I'm also coming to you from home, but yeah.

Great to see everyone here.

We got a great long laundry list of disciplines on this panel.

And I will say that being in the design fields, whether you're a researcher, an academic, or a professional, you will be consistently working with a significant amount of disciplines and they will be taking whatever you're doing and massaging it in one way or the other.

We do a significant amount of work at the community level in our department.

In particular, we work a lot with, myself, I wouldn't say we, but in my regards and in regards to kind of human health and public health, I do a lot with the School of Public Health in regards to taking, we take, they take soil, air and water quality samples, in kind of local communities, in particular marginalized communities that are abutting a lot of these industrial facilities.

And we examine a lot in regards to flood contamination, not just floods, but contamination transferal during flood events.

So, it's kind of a unique growing field.

And so, you know, having all these different disciplines with the expertise to understand these different sampling, what they, tell us what they mean, and then we can take that information, visualize it much better, take it to the community, show them what the science is saying, get their feedback.

And then we directly kind of take that back up the chain to the people who took the samples.

And so, you know, the design field, I think, serve a great role in not only kind of playing mediator between, you know, really complex sets of data and communities, but also coming up with A, prevention, and B, intervention strategies to help fix a lot of these issues, which are exposed by the science involved at those levels.

So, whether it be, you know, geo analytics or, you know, some of the things we do geo analytics, or actually on the ground sample taking, those types of things, but you know that all of us kind of work together, whether it be smaller scale, building an actual house, or larger scale planning an a actual region, or in the middle, urban design scale of really laying out land uses and building footprints and programmatic elements in a way that communities can grow, not only sustainably, but safely and enhancing public health outcomes that may not be so positive right now, depending on a myriad of factors, whether it be COVID, or obesity, or heart disease, or cancer clusters caused by X, Y, and Z going on, and the built environment conditions around you.

So, you know, the built environment is a amazing factor when it comes to public health and human health factors or outcomes.

And you know, this group here, working alongside a significant amount of other disciplines plays a primary role, when you think about it, in directing the outcomes of human health in that regard.

So, the more data and information, you can work together with other people, the better decisions you're gonna make, and the better human health outcomes they're going to get.

So, thanks to everyone for joining us and I'm looking forward to a great discussion here.

- Thank you.

So, Greg, who is, who are you going to point next?

- Harold Adams.

- Okay.

- (laughs) You're welcome, Harold.

- Unmute myself.

I'm delighted to join this.

I, as George mentioned earlier, I created or endowed four professorships, interdisciplinary professorships, with a view to breaking down some of the silos between the departments and building from the beginning of the freshman year with the students an opportunity to appreciate and respect each other's capabilities and to work in a team relationship.

I've seen it in my own practice at RTKL the magic of having all the players, the construction companies, the engineers, the architects, the planners, all working together in unison that the great out, you get the great outcomes when you do that.

Everyone's feels that they were the architect or the creator of the project with, and take pride in it.

So, I'm delighted to hear that there's a big emphasis on this in the healthcare group, and believe that it will takeoff and be the way of the future.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Harold.

Dr. Zhipeng Lu.

- Thank you, Greg.

And my name's Zhipeng Lu and I'm the Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture.

And I think the collaboration is a major of the, a lot of design planning and build projects and it's beyond health and healthcare facilities.

And so, I'm teaching the design for health studio.

Oftentimes, the studio will achieve better outcomes if we involve the different disciplines.

And my studio involve, you know, students and faculty members from landscape architecture, urban planning, and also people from public health and the College of Medicine as well.

And for my own research, and I also collaborating with, you know, researchers from different colleges.

So, Ray, Dr. Ray Pentecost has talked about a little bit, you know, the Center for Health System and Design.

What he did not mention, which is really significant, is that the center is the secretariat of the International Union of Architects' Public Health Group.

The next year, 2022, the International Union of Architects has designated the year of design for health.

It's beyond health and healthcare projects.

It's for all building types.

So, we are so glad to have that opportunity to work with UIA to promote the design for health, to involve peoples from multiple disciplines, all the disciplines.

So I'm glad that, you know, Dr. Greg Luhan and Professor George Mann organized this really, really meaningful lecture series, supported by our former students that so spread and around.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Dr. Chanam Lee?

- Hello (laughs).

So, yeah, I'm also with the Center for Health Systems and Design, and I direct a group called Design and Research for Active Living, which you may, and other faculty members hear.

I have a landscape architecture backbone, and I have a planning PhD.

Actually, my PhD is called interdisciplinary PhD in urban design and planning.

And I am also the first recipient of the certificate of health systems in design in 2000, 1999, as a non-architecture student, I was the first MLA student who received that certificate.

So, continuing on that collaboration theme, I feel it's in our blood to work with others and we shouldn't feel threatened or afraid of being someone different or being someone who is an outlier who may not be the mainstream or bringing something, you know, unexpected to the table.

There were times where I was the only woman in the land program.

Things totally changed, and there are many different settings where interdisciplinary collaboration may not be as comfortable, but I think we kind of came a long way where we embrace and respect and learn how to work with each other.

But along the process, there will always be the trial and error.

So, I want to compliment and also give credit to everybody in this team and others who are willing to take that extra challenge of going outside of their comfort zone and embracing someone like an outsider.

Oftentimes, I'm surrounded by healthcare architects.

Sometimes I'm in a meeting with the public health people, being the only design person.

So I think, we all try to kind of feel comfortable playing that role.

And we're going to push the agenda further forward.

With our team, as you can see, active living that has been the passion of our research team.

We've been pursuing projects around like, how we could build our communities so that people can lead active and engaging life without having to pay for the gym or, right, have a special, you know, program built into your program.

So putting, making sidewalks safe and having accessible parks nearby, having destinations nearby, so that you can walk to places.

So, how to create cities in our community environments so that people can easily incorporate active lifestyle and healthy habits, even access to healthy food, into your daily routine.

So, those have been my missions and a lot of us, around us in our team here.

So, I'm looking forward to learning more and also engaging more of the students and the other faculty from various disciplines in this line of research and teaching.

Thank you.

- Greg?

- Hernan?

- Just to, yeah, you know, I'm done (laughs).

- Can you hear me?

Hernan?

- Yes, sir.

Howdy, guys.

- Howdy.

- For George, thank you for having me again, you know, in the class.

Yeah, I am industry relations coordinator at the Department of Construction Science and our career fair's next week.

So, all you students out there, please come join us.

If you want to talk to a few companies about a potential internship or career in construction, we welcome it.

But speaking of construction and healthcare, now, I spent 15 years working with a company called Clark Construction and out of eight years out of those 15, I spent doing construction in healthcare.

So, I'm passionate about healthcare and I handled MEP systems.

So, I'm even more passionate about that.

And like Dr. Suermann said, on the eve of 20 years of since 9/11, the fact that I was able to work on a renovation in SAMMC, in San Antonio Military Medical Center in Fort Sam, it just brings back that importance of helping, of making sure that people are safe.

So, on collaboration, I got two quick stories for you guys.

When I was working in that $1.1 billion hospital in San Antonio, part of that project was a $300 million renovation of the existing hospital, an existing and fully operational hospital.

And we had daily meetings between architects and engineers in Austin Construction to make sure that anything that we shut down for any part of the building, we had a plan to put back together, just in case there was an injured soldier coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

So, I would typically get an eight hour window, a phone call, and I happened to do it three times, whenever I had to put things back together.

And if it wasn't because the architect and engineers were working with me every day in finding solutions, we wouldn't be able to have done that.

And we had 3,000 shutdown requests in four years.

And in those 3,000 shutdown requests, we didn't harm a single veteran or their family.

So, I was, I'm very proud about that.

On the second hospital, which, and that was, by the way, RTKL, Harold.

So, thank you very much for a fantastic job on that one.

The second one, the second story is when I was working with NBBJ Architects in New Orleans.

The issue with that project was that the money was awarded in 2003 by Congress.

But we started work on that project in 2012.

And you know, there's a little thing called inflation.

So, there were nine years between what, when Congress approved the money and when we started working.

So, let's just say that, when we had the budget, we were about 120 millions over, over budget, because of just the nine years.

So, we had a VA, VE meetings, which is value engineering meetings, three times a week, between NBBJ, who was the architect, between the engineer, which I, it escapes my mind right now, but the engineers and us meeting three times a week to make sure that we found ways to redesign and make sure that it was buildable and operational.

And we were able to save about $80 million by having those meetings for like six months.

We redesigned everything with the help of our subcontractors, architects, engineers, and the hospital worked perfectly fine and was totally operational.

And we wouldn't have done it if we were just builders by ourselves.

We definitely needed the architects and the engineers to work together and find solutions.

And of course, the VA to approve them, but it was definitely an amazing experience.

And that's why I love this class that George puts together.

And I'm always going to volunteer to be on it because I'm passionate about it.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Hernan.

I do, if you could just add your information on your career fair coming up.

- Yes, sir.

- Students, if you haven't been to it and you're on campus, go.

- It's the, we have the largest departmental career fair in the entire university.

We typically have somewhere around 160 and 180 companies.

Because of COVID last year, we only had about 120, but we're back to about 170 this semester.

And we're going to have about 1,000 students coming in.

It's going to be a face-to-face in the Brazos Expo Center.

It's next week.

We have, on Wednesday night, a social mixer in Hurricane Harry's to, where students, faculty, and companies can meet each other.

Then career fair is Thursday from 8 o'clock to noon, and then interviews from one o'clock to five o'clock that same Thursday.

And again, we have, I actually, we even have a couple of architectural firms coming to recruit from us, but mainly construction companies, subcontractors, developers, et cetera, et cetera.

So if you're interested, please come see me in Francis 208C.

If you need information, if you need the list of companies, and if not, join us next week.

- And that may be one of the most important invitations.

And it perplexes me that students who want to be architects don't invade the place, because it's in another department.

So, there's a challenge to those of you who are students to get out there and see, and bring the word back.

They also have the money over there.

(Hernan laughs) (laughs) Sorry about that.

- Hernan, please send me the linked information to that, and I'll distribute it to all the students in the class.

So, thank you.

I'd like to introduce now, - Absolutely.

- Bill Eide, who is a visiting scholar at Texas A and M. - Thank you.

Ray is already cringing in anticipation of my comment.

So I (laughs), I'm an example of a one person collaborative effort.

I have a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's in architecture from the University of Texas, that other school just down the road.

I'm also a proud graduate of that program, which was specifically designed for people without a bachelor's degree in architecture.

So, the whole class, my cohort was, in fact, a collaborative effort, as everybody brought their undergraduate experience to the table.

I've been in favor of collaboration, and I've promoted it, tried it, I've practice healthcare architecture for 40, 45 years, and we did a lot of good in a collaborative effort.

One thing I would like to leave you with, though, is to know when a collaborative effort is the right thing and when it's not.

Not all projects are the same, not all need that kind of effort.

Understand your options, understand the approaches to take to be successful.

The owner will define success for you.

The architect doesn't define success, or the engineers, or the landscape architects, or anybody else, and teams are getting larger and larger as the projects get larger and larger.

So, the importance of the collaboration is even more significant.

And I'm pleased to admit the career has been worthwhile because I've been involved from planning, design, construction, and even operations of healthcare facilities.

And it makes a difference if you're aware and in touch with everybody and the whole program, to treat everybody the same, to treat everybody equally, to treat everybody as being important.

And I think, it was the last speaker who said, take ownership of the project, take ownership of your work, take ownership of the project.

And you'll be a much happier architect for it.

I think we need to think in terms of architecture and architects in the small a version of it rather than just the big A.

For the architect remain as the leader of the effort is very important to the ultimate quality of the environment that we create.

So, take it seriously.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

I'd like to reach out to the audience.

Timothy Clem?

- Yes, sir.

- Collaboration, two minutes, go.

- (laughs) Well, collaboration is really the basis of all good design projects.

I lean very heavily on all of the consultants that work on my project.

I lean very heavily on the owners that we work with.

I've really appreciated hearing that's exactly true, that the owners define success of the project.

And then the design team takes that as the goals for the project.

So, I'm looking forward to learning more about collaboration in these series.

- Fantastic.

Thank you, Tim.

I also see that Joe Sprague has joined the call.

Joe, welcome.

- Yes, Dean, how are you doing today, sir?

Sorry, I'm a little bit late.

I had a technical difficulty getting in my house.

The, I tried to open the door and the handle came off and I had to go to the garage and figure out a way to get in.

I apologize.

- No worries, so we're talking about, oh, I think he just hung up.

- No, I'm here.

- Oh, you're here?

All right.

So, fantastic.

So we're talking about collaboration.

So, put us in the context of collaboration from your vantage point.

- Well, team playing has always been, at least in my estimation, an experience or key part to having a successful project.

I mean, they, I learned this at Auburn in the beginning, when we did team projects in design work and design studio, you always had two or three students, you know, and then at A and M it is even more so because it takes a lot of different disciplines and experience levels to coordinate successfully through the PDC process.

Obviously, upfront, you need the planning expertise and, you know, people who can look at demography and look at workloads and project healthcare trends, and look at the way the departments are sized before you even put together a program of square footage and then start to talk about a budget.

And obviously, architects get involved very heavily at that point and end up having not only the scope, the size, but with a contractor on board, which is the second part of the team, I guess, or maybe it's the first part, depending on what if it's design build, the team works with a contractor.

If it's a design bid build, then it's the separate contracts typically from an owner.

And depending on the owner's preferences, each one of them has an advantage or disadvantage.

And then as we go through the consultants, the engineers, the MEP firms are vital in healthcare, mechanical, particularly in electrical.

And of course, civil is important.

We, at HKS, we always had an in-house civil company because that's important, so much of the architecture and sizing, footprints, structures, and other issues that relate to the design of the building.

So then once you have, you know, that design, then, you know, you've got the contractor and, or the construction manager comes in with their subs and starts their team.

And there's a mechanical electrical contractor, perhaps, unless you have a large construction firm that has them in-house.

And some of these, that's a design build option, you know, which is preferable with some people because they like to have one source.

It does have disadvantages because you don't have checks and balances.

So, I think once you get the choice of delivery process on, you've got the drawings, the owner approves them, and you, you know, you start into construction and then coordinate the construction team.

And you have project reviews, as you go along, looking at specs and looking at each of the team members, and then you have the punch list at the end of it, where you have your field people that have, essentially, you know, have experience in construction, in the field.

A lot of times, they're contractors.

So, the team starts at the beginning and ends at the end.

And then obviously, the key part of the team is the owner and ASHE, American Society of Hospital Engineering, has a manual on planning, design, and construction that I'd highly recommend.

It's a workbook that talks about all this in some detail, and it's available with the American Hospital Association, an ASHE press.

So, having said that, I think that's enough at this point.

I apologize again for not being here at the beginning, and hopefully that's of some help to those that are there on time (laughs).

- Joe, it's a good thing a police car wasn't passing by when you broke into your own house.

- I know.

I know, but you know, I'm in a gated community.

And it's, the, my neighbors knew me.

So, they knew.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

I says, "I can't open the door "and I got to get in the house."

(laughs) - Great to have you.

- Thank you.

Good to be here.

Sorry.

- That's, that's okay.

- I think we have time for one more presentation.

So, I'll reach out.

I also see David Nienhueser on the screen.

So, David?

- Hi, good afternoon, everybody.

I very well know better than to show up anything where George is in the audience and not expect to get called upon.

So, you know, I've been listening to all these wonderful thoughts and I wanted to echo a little bit about what we just heard from Joe, as well as Bill Eide.

You know, I work in a portion of the industry that often is standalone.

And over the last few years, I've seen a lot more traction with joining forces with the design team.

And instead of just handing it off after my work is completed.

And I think the reason a lot of us have chosen healthcare is, the ultimate return is delivering to the owner or the client a solution that provides them the ability to provide the best possible environment, so that they can deliver the best possible care to the community.

And so, when we think about collaboration and teamwork, you know, all of us coming together and sharing our thoughts and making each other smarter, as well as delivering the best possible product to the client is ultimately what we need to aspire to.

And not what historically, you know, I can go back a couple of decades where everybody had their own piece of the pie that they were focused only on wanting to make sure that they got the most out of their time with the client and doing away with egos and sharing thoughts, and again, trying to make sure we can deliver the best possible solution, so that ultimately, and when we talked about the provider being the owner and the client, I like to take that a little bit further and think about the patients and the community also being the end client, because what we're trying to do is provide the best environment for them.

- David, it's great to have you back.

And David was among the 5% of the students who knew what was going on all the time.

He also had a bar in his garage, which was a draw for the entire College of Architecture.

Didn't you have a half circle bar in where you parked the cars?

But there were no cars in that garage.

There were other things.

Anyhow, welcome back.

(laughs) Thank you.

- So at the, - Sorry.

- At the beginning of the presentation, I asked the students to, if you had questions, please put them into the chat.

Many of the students are logged into Zoom.

So, we have a couple of questions to Dr. Chanam Lee, how do you use your environmental health research to engage the community and interact with various organizations to achieve a long-term health goal?

- So, for, from my perspective, long-term health goals could be achieved by helping people make changes to their lifestyle to be more active and healthy, and to be able to more easily adopt healthy habits.

So, my job or interest is to make those changes easier by finding out ways to make our community environment more supportive of those healthy lifestyle choices through our research.

So we also work closely with a lot of public sector partners from the city, transit agencies, et cetera, to help inform their policy decision processes, and also community members in our local community that we work in, El Paso, often, some local communities here to make sure that our research is really sensitive to their specific social, cultural contexts.

We are content experts, but the community members are context experts.

I learned that term from some of the colleagues from the planning conference that resonates really well with me and what I do.

So, that's how I would take for that question.

Thank you.

- Harold Adams, you have lived a career as a pillar of interdisciplinary relationships and have reached out to the college to enable opportunities for interdisciplinary design through charrettes.

What is preventing the college from truly being interdisciplinary?

- Forget to unmute.

I think we've made a lot of progress.

We're making progress every day as other groups join in such as this seminar, this group of lectures.

So, you know, I'm not worried about it happening.

I think it is happening.

And I think the wonderful thing is to see the opportunities to work with other disciplines across the university and various consultants to come to be involved in it.

So, I believe we're making great progress.

- Awesome.

Thank you.

Another question for Dr. Chanam Lee.

You mentioned being the only woman in the room during your career.

What words of encouragement do you have for young women entering this interdisciplinary space?

- So, the good news is that it's no longer true (laughs).

You see a lot more balance in places they usually call, it's amazing, during my career here, less than 20 years, things have changed dramatically, but you will always be, not only based on gender, sometimes you might be the only one representing architecture among people dealing with planning or engineering, or you might be in a room, you know, being the only minority, or the only student, or the only academia.

Sometimes I'm surrounded by professionals in the field.

So I'm not, I'm kind of sometimes introverted and that kind of setting used to scare me, but I feel nowadays, I think it takes some time and effort, but people are respecting, you know, different ideas and difference, how to say, different people who may not look like them in various settings.

So, I think you just have to be there and expose yourself out there and make your voice heard and known.

Not that I did a good job, but reflecting back on, you just have to, you know, be part of that, and that would probably help you grow your confidence and comfort level in it.

So, I hope many of us start doing it, then I think it will just become the norm, not being different and adding diversity.

It's a positive thing, not a negative thing.

- So, George, can you explain a little bit more from a diversity standpoint, to Chanam's point?

How did Chuck Greco, CEO of Linbeck, answer that question?

- Well, you're not gonna like the answer, Greg, but we asked him that.

And in a second, he said, "Do away with the departments," because he felt they were breaking, putting up walls and silos, kind of what Vanegas was talking about last week, but it was less gentle.

And so, I was taken aback, but I've thought about it.

And I think, to some extent, we've built a structure that it can't respond.

I'll give you one little example.

When we were working with construction, they have classes Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we have classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which meant the students had to work at night to go face-to-face.

So, I think if we had a looser curriculum that could respond the way firms respond to opportunities, it would help.

So that's why I said, maybe I set a, I didn't mean to set a trap for you, but I wanted to relay what Chuck Greco said, which would be very difficult to do, but there is a point to that.

Can't hear you.

- Common ground.

There is a common ground between the departments that can serve as a vital force for us to come together.

And we're witnessing it now, even just with the health systems lecture series.

Joe Sprague, how does your career, discipline, and organization connect with the other speakers that have presented today?

Now, it's kind of an unfair question and we only have three minutes left.

- (laughs) As usual, the dean gives you an impossible question to answer, but you know, the team is always the concept.

I mean, I don't care what the elements are.

Nobody's smart enough to have the right answers, the right experience, and the right amount of time to make a project a success.

So, I think, from the owner standpoint, the hospital is always looking for the end point.

Was the project design as it was intended?

Was it delivered on time?

Was it in budget?

Does it have any leaks?

Does the mechanical system work?

Do the lights come on?

And all that said together is, has to be answered by a team.

So to me, it's so clear that, when people are involved in architecture, you have to have a total team from start to end.

- That's awesome.

And again, I think one of the challenges that we have, just in the sense of academia, often we put people in teams, but we don't teach them how to be a team.

And if we can address that issue, we'll be in a lot greater place.

Bill, you had a comment?

- Just a quick comment, because I think sometimes we educate, we bring people in the School of Architecture that aren't, it's a non-collaborative (indistinct).

So, if we want people to collaborate, we need to educate the collaborative teaching.

- Correct.

I'm not sure if, was everyone able to hear that?

- No.

- Maybe you could repeat.

- Okay.

So, I'll repeat.

So, Bill had a comment.

It's like, often we bring people into architecture or into the programs, plural, that are taught about the sole practitioner or about a mindset that is really about building themselves, not about building the collaborative team.

So, maybe we should recruit people that are ripe for collaboration and help us to get on this interdisciplinary track more specifically.

thank you, Greg.